Translating Good Omens subtitles: "Bildad the Shuhite! Need any shoes?"

This post contains exactly one (1) line from Good Omens Season 2, which technically makes it a spoiler that should be tagged under the fandom's robust spoiler tagging policy.

 

At one point in Episode 2, Crowley introduces himself as "Bildad the Shuhite," then adds "Need any shoes?"

A pun, with half the pun unchangeable! (Bildad the Shuhite being the name of a specific biblical character who would already have an established name in the target language.) How do you translate this?

I've recorded the content of the subtitles here but haven't drilled down into them yet. Additions, analysis, commentary, and transcriptions of the languages I can't do myself are more than welcome!

 

Languages I know:

French (both Canada and France): souliers. This is a direct translation and doesn't really work as a pun.

German: Schuhe (direct translation, works as a pun)

Spain Spanish: suéteres (sweaters, works as a pun)

Latin American Spanish: jesuita (Jesuit. Works as a pun with "el suhita")

Polish: buty (direct translation, doesn't work as a pun)

 

Languages I don't know: (I'm just transcribing them from now, might dabble in looking them up later)

Bahasa Melayu: "Perlukan kasut?"

Catalan: xulla

Dansk: sko

Euskara:  "Surik nahi?"

Filipino: Sapatos

Indonesia: Bildad, orag Suah. Butah Sepatu?

Italian: Servano scarpe?

Nederlands: schoenen

Norsk Bokmal (Norwegian): sko

Brazil Portuguese: suar

Portugual Portuguese:  suínos

Romanian: cizme 

Suomi (Finnish): "Onko kengän tarve?"

Swedish: Schack

Turkish: "Ayakkabi lazim mi?"

Cestina (Czech): Buty

Russian (my transliteration): "Savany sh'yu"

Ukrainian (my transliteration): shurupi

Greek, Arabic and Hebrew are also available, but I'm not able to translate or transliterate them.

Good Omens subtitle translations: "They are toast: T-O-S-T...E!"

This post contains exactly one (1) line from Good Omens Season 2, which technically makes it a spoiler that should be tagged under the fandom's robust spoiler tagging policy.

 

At one point in the second season of Good Omens, the demon Shax, who is already established as a poor speller, says "They are TOAST! T-O-S-T-...E!"

Naturally, I started thinking about how you might translate that.

Fortunately, there are subtitles in 29 different languages, so I decided to write them down.

(I originally braindumped this on Twitter, but given that it's no longer reliable or googleable, I'm also putting it here.)

Additions, analysis, commentary, and transcriptions of the languages I can't do myself are more than welcome! 

Languages I know:

Canadian French: "fichus: F-I-S-H-U" 

France French: "cuits: C-U-I-S" 

German: "töte: T-Ö-H-T-E" 

Latin American Spanish: "fritos: F-R-I-T-O-S" (no error ) 

Spain Spanish: "muertos: M-U-R-T-O...S" 

Polish: "po nich: P-O N-I-C-H" (no error)

 

Languages I don't know:

Bahasa Melayu (Malay): "mati: M-A-T-E" (I think - I'm not certain about the morphology) 

Catalan: "Fregits: F-R-E-J-I-T-S" 

Dansk (Danish): "kaput: K-A-P-U-D"

Euskara (Basque)): "akabatu: A-Q-A-B-A-T-U" 

Filipino has her spell out "P-A-T-A...I", but I don't see that combination of letters in the preceding sentences. I don't know enough about the language to provide more info.

Indonesia: "celaka: C-E-L-A-G-A" 

Italian: "fritti: F-R-I-T-T..I: 

Magyar (Hungarian): "kampec: K-A-N-P-E-C...Z" 

Nederlands (Dutch): "klos: C-L-O-S" 

Norsk Bokmal (Norwegian): "ferdige: F-R-E-D-I-G...E"

Brazilian Portuguese: "fritos: F-R-I-T-O...Z" 

Portugal Portuguese: "ares: A-R-E-S...E" (the whole segment is "vão todos pelos ares" - I have a hunch "ares" might not contain all the meaning) 

Romanian: "praf: F-R-A-P"

Suomi (Finnish): "mennyttä: M-E-N-Y-T-A" 

Swedish: "döda: D-Ö-D-D-A" 

Turkish: "kizartirium: K-I-Z-A-T-T" (the letters I've transcribed as "i" are actually the dotless Turkish I, but I don't know how to type that)

Cestina (Czech): "napadrt: N-A-P-A-T-R-T" (There's a diacritic on the T that I don't know how to make) 

Greek is available, but I don't know how to transcribe or transliterate it. 

Russian (my transliteration): "kayuk: K-O-YU-G"

Ukrainian: the word is (my transliteration) "kinets" with a soft sign at the end, and she spells it out as (my transliteration "K-I-N-E-TS" without the soft sign at the end. 

There are also Hebrew and Arabic subtitles, but I can't read, transcribe or transliterate them.

Read Aloud

In my work life, MVP of all computer tools since my head injury is the Read Aloud function in Word. (Similar functions exist in other software, and comparable tools are also sometimes embedded in the OS or downloadable as apps.)

Since my head injury, I've had to work harder to focus visually, especially on text and especially on a screen. This makes the revision and editing parts of my job much harder! I can easily focus enough to read for comprehension, but the deeper level of focus required to catch the kinds of errors my brain usually autocorrects takes an enormous amount of work - and all too much of that work is going into buckling down and focusing, before I can even start putting effort and energy into the actual work of my job.

My saviour is Read Aloud. When it reads the text to me verbally, the kinds of errors my eyes and my brain usually gloss over come out sounding conspicuous and bizarre. Overly-French structures sound heavy and awkward, and basically anything that needs attention sounds jarring.

Because Read Aloud reads the text at a steady pace, I don't have to keep myself on task - the computer is doing it for me. Depending on the text and my eyesight, I might read along with the text on the screen, or I might look at the French while listening to the English to make sure every concept is present, or I might put a cold compress over my eyes or work on a vision therapy exercise.

Sometimes I correct errors as I go, sometimes I flag things for further attention with the Comments function. Then, once the readthrough is finished, I can put all my effort and energy into actually fixing the things I have flagged for attention, without it all having been drained on finding the things that need attention.

***

I've talked before about how audiobooks don't work for me because they go in one ear and out the other and I don't retain the story, so it seems super counterintuitive that Read Aloud would actually help with my revision and editing. I've been thinking about this a lot, and I've come to the realization that this is because I have a lifetime of experience reading for information.

When I read with my eyes, my brain is actively working to glean and assimilate meaning from the text, so it overlooks straightforward typos like public/pubic. When I listen, I'm not using the same mechanism as I've used my whole life to glean and assimilate meaning, so my brain isn't working to make sense of the text, and therefore isn't "helping" it.

I once read a book called Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain, which helps you learn to draw by using your right brain to see lines and shadows. You learn to think "This line needs to be at this specific angle", rather than the left-brained inclination to think "I am drawing a hand." You think about the structure of the subject rather than what the subject actually is.

 

Using Read Aloud for revision works similarly. It doesn't trigger the functions in my brain that try to make the text make sense, so I can focus on the structure, on whether anything is out of place.

 

This does mean that I don't retain the content when revising. It goes in one ear and out the other just like audiobooks. (If it's my own translation, I assimilated the content during the drafting phase. If it's someone else's translation, I won't retain it.) But that doesn't actually matter! I don't need to learn the content or remember the plot, I just need to make the text work. If I ever need the information, I can look it back up! And if, for some reason, I need to actually assimilate the information, I still have the option of reading with my eyes.

Things They Should Invent: concordance tool with a Boolean NOT function

Many words, terms and phrases have a common go-to translation, but also have scope of meaning that doesn't fall under the common go-to translation.

 

If the common go-to translation is extremely common, it can saturate concordance tool results, completely burying alternative translations. This can lead inexperienced translators to conclude there is no other possible translation (even if the go-to is inappropriate), and can even stymie experienced translators ("I know there's another translation, but I'm completely blanking on it!")

To remedy this, I want to be able to apply a Boolean NOT function to the target-language results, to eliminate the common go-to translations and see what's left.

Examples:

 

- Show me translations of porte-parole that are not "spokesperson".

- Show me translations of intervenant that are not "intervener" or "responder".

- Show me translations of animateur that are not "animator" or "facilitator".

 

With the common translations that I know are not suitable out of the way, the tool can better do its job of giving me options to pinpoint le mot juste for my particular translation needs.

I have no idea how feasible this would be from a programming perspective. I know a Boolean NOT can be used in user input, I know that you can filter output by selecting and unselecting attribute tags from a given list (like you often find in online shopping), but I have no idea about the feasibility of filtering output with user-provided Boolean operators.

If it would in fact be unfeasible, I have an idea for an alternative: sort results in alphabetical order by how the word/term/phrase in question is translated in the target text.

This would group all the translations I know I don't want to use together, making it easier to find other options.

For example, if all the instances of "spokesperson" are together (with variants like "spokesman" nearby), I can start at the beginning of the alphabetically-sorted results and scroll through until I hit "spokesperson", seeing all the available options. Then, when I hit "spokesperson", I can jump to the last result and scroll through in reverse order until I hit "spokesperson" again, thereby quickly getting an overview of all the non-"spokesperson" results.

Concordance tools do tend to provide a sentence or a snippet as output, but they "know" what the matched term is, so it seems like it should be feasible to sort alphabetically by matched term but still show snippets.

[X] or [X+1] [noun]s

A turn of phrase I've noticed recently, although it seems old-fashioned (or possibly British) is "[X] or [X+1] [noun]s".

Examples:
- "An army of 300 or 400 soldiers."
- "I drove there with 2 or 3 friends."
- "The house had 13 or 14 windows."

This turn of phrase is interesting to me, because I think it has connotations and I can't tell what they are.  I suspect it's not (or perhaps not always) literal - like how "a dozen eggs" means literally 12 eggs, but "a dozen people in line" can mean 10 or 14.

Does "300 or 400 soldiers" mean between 300 and 400?  Or might it be 298 or 407?  Or might it be between 300 and 500? (i.e. "three hundred and something or four hundred and something")?  The speaker knows, I can't tell.

The "2 or 3 friends" phase is a real-life example, i.e. someone actually said that. (Unfortunately, I didn't save the source.)  That's a situation where they'd actually know the real number - surely when it's only 2 or 3 people, you can remember who exactly was there.  So why did they phrase it that way?

This sounds like a strange thing to worry about - even if I don't know what the speaker's thinking, it's clear enough for our purposes - but this kind of thing is sometimes relevant in translation, when the target language doesn't do the same thing with numbers or doesn't have the same connotations.

For example, in French they have the word dizaine, deriving from dix, meaning 10. As I mentioned above, in English we have "dozen", which means either "12" or "approximately 12" depending on the context. (French also has douzaine, meaning "dozen".) Dizaine does the same thing with 10 as "dozen" does with 12 - it either means "10" or "approximately 10", depending on context.

But because English doesn't have a word for dizaine, the French to English translator needs to figure out from context where this particular instance of dizaine means "10" or "approximately 10", and whether the approximateness needs to be explicitly stated in the translation. (For example, if I say "Cassandra can cook Thanksgiving dinner for 10 all by herself!" and there were really 11 people at dinner, no harm is done by my saying 10. If I say "Cassandra invited her 10 nieces and nephews to Thanksgiving dinner" and Cassandra actually has 11 nieces and nephews, someone might read that and wonder whom Cassandra has disowned.)

This doesn't seem like it would be relevant to translating "[x] or [x+1]" - all languages have words for numbers and for the concept of "or". (And if there are any that don't, please let me know in the comments!) You can just plug the words for the numbers and for "or" into the sentence, and the translation is complete, right?

Not necessarily.

It's possible that a number phrase that's perfectly cromulent in one language might sound unduly weird in another, and the translator might have to adjust.

An example I routinely encounter in technical and administrative documents written in French is an approximating adjective followed by a non-round number, for example environ 473 voitures ("around 473 cars").

It is a simple matter to translate the words, but it sounds conspicuously weird to the English reader in a way that it doesn't to the French reader, so the English translator has to figure out the connotations (do they mean literally 473 or approximately? If they mean approximately, how did they land on that number rather than 470 or 475?) and the implications (what would be the consequences if you said "473" without any modifier and it turned out to be approximate? Or vice versa?) and adjust their translation accordingly, or find a workaround. (I like "some" as a workaround here - "some 473 cars". It conveys the notion of approximateness, but is also more easily overlooked by the English reader).

There might be some languages where "300 or 400 soldiers" also sounds conspicuously weird in a way it doesn't to the English reader, so a translator working away from English might need to understand the connotations so they can eliminate the conspicuous weirdness without eliminating accuracy.

And that translator may well ask me, in my capacity as a native-speaker Anglophone, exactly what the connotations are.

And I haven't a clue! Isn't that weird?

More benefits of using mitigative language when editing

Seen on Twitter: this thread about using mitigative language rather than assertive language in the editing process:

Mitigative language in editing



In addition to the excellent points here about face, a few things occurred to me specifically about the nature of editing/revision in translation. (They may also apply to unilingual editing, but my experience in that area is far more limited.)

1. Some edits are objective and some edits are subjective

"This word is spelled wrong" is objective. "The alliteration in this sentence sounds silly" is subjective. By using mitigative language for subjective edits, you're making it clear that your objective edits are objectively necessary - and thereby increasing their credibility. If you're too aggressive about your subjective edits, you come across as someone who makes mostly arbitrary changes.

2. Sometimes the editor-as-reader's thoughts and feelings are what's relevant

In translation school, they taught us that if one reader gets a certain impression from a text, others will as well.  This also applies to the editor as they are reading the text. If the editor says something like "I initially thought the word "drink" was a noun, not a verb, and got very confused," or "I felt like the author was speaking to me condescendingly here," what is relevant is that the editor-as-reader had that reaction. What caused that reaction? Can we - and should we - eliminate the cause of that reaction? Which brings us to...

3. We don't want to get caught up in debating the objective truth at the expense of subjective improvements

I can best illustrate this with a story about user-testing a website design.

My task was to find a specific widget and put it in the cart as though I was going to buy it.  I first skimmed the website for something to click on that said "Widgets", but didn't find anything.  Ultimately, it took me four tries to find the right route.

During the fourth try, I scrolled down further than previously to see the bottom of the sidebar menu, and discovered that there was in fact a button that said "Widgets". However, there was a banner-like design element above that set of buttons that led me to think there wouldn't be any more relevant information below.

So my feedback was: "I was looking for something to click on that said "Widgets", and didn't see anything.  I didn't scroll down as far as the rectangular buttons because I got the impression that the banner above them was a placeholder and I didn't think there'd be any buttons below it. To fix this, I would suggest deleting the banner entirely. If that's not possible, perhaps consider moving it it below the buttons so the presence of the buttons is readily apparent."

Quite mitigative, not at all assertive, and effective feedback. The banner was promptly removed in response.

But imagine if I'd been assertive and non-mitigative, as though my perception were the objective truth.

Me: "There isn't anything that says Widgets."
Website designer: "Yes there is. See?"

I'd be wrong - there was a Widgets button. And because I'm outright wrong, the website designer's gut instinct would be to prove that I'm wrong and disregard my feedback on the grounds that I clearly don't know what I'm talking about.

Similarly, in the example given in #2 above, if, instead of "I felt like the author was speaking to me condescendingly here," you assertively say "This is too condescending," the author's visceral reaction could be "No, it's not condescending at all."  And then you're caught up in arguing over whether it's condescending, rather than determining (and, if necessary, fixing) what gave you that impression.


Your goal in editing and/or revising is not to win, but to make the text as good as possible. Conveying the nuances of your response to the text helps achieve that goal. Trying to be assertive takes the focus away from that goal.

Things Microsoft Word Should Invent (multilingual spellchecking edition)

1. Display all spelling and grammar errors, no matter how much it slows down the program

If your Word document has too many of the red squiggles indicating spelling errors as detected by the spellchecker, it gives you a warning saying there are too many spelling and grammar errors to continue displaying them.  Then all the red squiggles go away and, if you want to spellcheck, you have to select the spellcheck function from the menu and let the spellcheck program crawl the document rather than correcting red squiggles as you go.

The red squiggles are important to my translation process, and not just for spellchecking purposes.  They show me at a glance where I have and haven't translated, as the text in one language is going to be full of red squiggles when the spellchecker is set to the other language.  This is particularly relevant in very long documents (which I don't always translate linearly) and for bilingual documents - which are also the two kinds of documents that are most likely to involve a phase of the translation process where there are too many red squiggles regardless of whether the proofing language is set to the source language or the target language.

So I want a "Show spelling and grammar errors, no matter what, no matter how many there are, no matter how much it slows down the program" option. Just give me my red squiggles - I'll wait! And if I find it is in fact too slow, I can turn them off, and then turn them back on when I particularly need them.

(Yes, I know you're supposed to be able to mark different sections of the document as different languages or tell Word not to spellcheck a certain section, but in practice I find those functions are hit and miss.  Sometimes I tell it over and over again that the left column is English and the right column is French, or that I don't want it to spellcheck the first six pages, but it just doesn't take.  Same with turning the red squiggles back on after I've translated the whole document - sometimes it just says there are too many spelling and grammar errors without even recounting.  I suppose another option would be to make these functions work reliably.)

2. Add phrases to the spellcheck dictionary

In some circumstances, for certain combinations of genre, context and audience, I have to leave official names in the source language rather than translating them into English. Of course, this means they show up as errors in my spellchecking, even though they're not.

I want to be able to add these official names to the spellcheck dictionary, so it doesn't give them red squiggles and corrects them if I make a typo.  However, I don't want to add the individual words to the dictionary, because taken individually they would still be untranslated words and/or typos. I just want spellcheck to recognize the phrase. For example, I want it to recognize that "Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Occupation du territoire" is supposed to be there, but the individual words "ministère" and "affaires" and "municipales" and "territoire", when they don't appear in that exact phrase, are not supposed to be there.   

Computers can do this. Search functions have "whole words only" or "exact phrase only" options. And the error detection aspect of spellchecking is basically a search function (i.e. find all the words on this list, then put red squiggles under all the other words). So they should be able to create this option and thereby help reduce the risk of making typos when some words are in another language that hasn't lived in the user's fingers for as long.

Is there a name for the opposite of the Dunning-Kruger effect?

In one of my very first translation classes, the prof asked us to think about how we'd translate a short English sentence into French.  The sentence was grammatically simple and contained three words that rhymed. (I'm not posting it here because it will become googleable and ruin my prof's whole lesson plan.)  The point of this lesson was to discuss the various factors that many need to be translated.  Are we after the meaning of the sentence?  Are we after a rhyme?  Do we need to convey its brevity and simplicity?

My classmates seemed to find this a reasonably easy request and immediately began discussing it.  But I was panicking, because I didn't even know how to say one of the three key words in French!  I felt in over my head and desperately out of my league!  It was only the first or second classes ever, and already I couldn't handle it even though every else could!

So I frantically and stealthily looked up the word I didn't know in the dictionary, and discovered that if I used the first word in the dictionary entry and the most straightforward translation of the two other key words, I could have two out of the three key words rhyme.  And if I replaced the third word with another word that would fit nicely into the sentence and create a similar image, I could have all three rhyme.

(As an analagous example, suppose looking in the dictionary led me to "Bite the red kite."  If the rhyme scheme was more important than the meaning of the actual words, I could use "Bite the white kite.")

It seemed so glaringly obvious!  This was quite clearly the correct answer!

But why weren't any of my classmates coming up with the same thing?  They were coming up with all these things that were way different and no one had even touched on the words I had in mind...this must mean there's something wrong with my idea!  So I said nothing the whole class and felt in way over my  head.

This memory came to mind in the shower the other day, 13 years after the fact, with 10 years' professional experience under my belt.  And I realized: my idea was perfectly good!  It may well even be the optimal translation! It was more effective at rendering both the meaning of the original and the rhyme scheme than what my classmates were suggesting, even after 10 years' experience I can't think of anything better, and, even if something better exists, any competent translator would agree that my idea was a perfectly valid attempt.  And I was still a teenager at the time!

I was so afraid at that time.  I was surrounded by people who had been to immersion and on exchanges and could use slang and real-life accents, and I felt so hideously incompetent in comparison.  But I knew my shit, way better than I could even have imagined.

(Which makes the conventional wisdom that teenagers and young adults think they know everything all the more frustrating.)

Machine translation FAIL

One of the things I like to test translation software with is formal French complimentary closings.  French uses long, gorgeous, wordy passages where we'd just say "sincerely" in English, so it's useful to determine whether the software recognizes the function of the text.  I was recently demonstrating this, and got the following result (click to embiggen):

For those of you who don't read French, the phrase input here is a French complimentary closing, appropriate to a formal business letter. With the exception of one serious error, the English is a reasonable literal translation.

There are two problems here, one macro and one micro.

The macro problem is that the French is a complimentary closing, and the English is not.  English complimentary closings are things like "Sincerely," or "Yours truly," and that's how this sentence should be translated.  The actual words don't matter; the message is "This is to indicate that I am ending the letter in the prescribed letter, and the next thing you see will be my signature."

And the micro problem is that, on a word-for-word level, it translated the French "Madame" (i.e. Ms. or Ma'am) with the English "Sir", thereby addressing the recipient as the wrong gender.  Not only is this clearly unacceptable, it's something even the most simplistic machine translation should be able to handle. Even if an individual text in their corpus got misaligned, they should have some mechanism to recognize that "Sir" is not the most common translation of "Madame". Even a calque of the French ("Madam") would be a better translation than "Sir", which is a sure sign of a particularly bad translation. I'm quite surprised to see this happening in 2013.

Wherein Eddie Izzard becomes my hero all over again

As I've blogged before, I've been trying to figure out how Eddie Izzard translated his giraffes and tigers bit into French. Because it's based on charades, he can't just plug French words in, he'd have to find a whole new word to charade.

After wondering about this for years, I finally got my answer, thanks to "Claywoman" on Eddie's fan site (third post in the thread - I can't figure out how to make direct links):

The giraffes were there too but with twist because tiger doesn't work in French, it became a lion. "Lit" (pronounced lee) is French for bed and "on" is a French pronoun for we or they... different mimes but he still made it very funny.

This is particularly impressive because the tigers really should have been lions in English in the first place! Tigers live in Asia and giraffes live in Africa (hence Monty Python's "A tiger??? In Africa??"), but Eddie was using a tiger in the English-language charades because it's charadable in English. So this is not only an effective translation of comedy, an effective translation of the non-verbal, and an effective translation of the non-translatable, but it's one of those so very rare situations where the translation is an improvement upon the original!

Well done to you, Mr. Izzard! I'm quite genuinely impressed, and at the same time kicking myself for not having thought of it myself.

The problem with conventional thinking about machine translation

Reading In the Plex, Steven Levy's fascinating biography of Google, I came across the following quote from machine translation pioneer Warren Weaver:

When I look at an article in Russian, I say, "This is really written in English, but it has been coded in some strange symbols. I will now proceed to decode."

I can tell you with absolute certainty that this is incorrect, and people who don't find themselves able to get past this way of thinking end up being very poor translators.

A more accurate approach would be "This idea really exists in a system of pure concepts unbounded by the limits of language or human imagination, but it has been coded in a way that one subset of puny humans can understand. I will now encode it for another subset of puny humans to understand."

To translate well, you have to grasp the concepts without the influence of the source language, then render them in the target language. You're stripping the code off and applying a new one.

If you translate Russian to English by assuming that the Russian is really in English, what you're going to end up with is an English text that is really Russian. Your Anglophone readers will be able to tell, and might even have trouble understanding the English.

The Russian text is not and has never been English. There's no reason for it to be. The Russian author need never have had a thought in English. He need never have even heard of English. Are your English thoughts really in Russian? Are they in Basque? Xhosa? Aramaic? Of course not! They're in English, and there's no need or reason for them to be in any other language.

This is a tricky concept for people who don't already grasp it to grasp, because when we start learning a new language (and often for years and years of our foray into a new language) everything we say or write in that language is really in English (assuming you're Anglophone - if you're not, then, for simplicity's sake, mentally search and replace "English" with your mother tongue for the purpose of this blog post). We learn on the first day of French class that je m'appelle means "my name is". But je m'appelle isn't the English phrase "my name is" coded into French. (If anything is that, it would be mon nom est.) The literal gloss of je m'appelle is "I call myself", but je m'appelle isn't the English idea "I call myself" coded into French either. If anything, it's the abstract idea of "I am introducing myself and the next thing I say is going to be my name" encoded into French. The French code for that concept is je m'appelle, the English code is "my name is".

I'm trying to work on a better analogy to explain this concept to people who don't already grok it, but here's the best I've got so far:

Think of the childhood game of Telephone, where the first person whispers something to the second person, then the second person whispers what they heard to the third person, and so on and so on until the last person says out loud what they heard and you all have a good laugh over how mangled it got.

What Mr. Weaver is proposing is analogous to trying your very very best to render exactly what you heard the person before you say.

But to grasp concepts without the influence of language and translate well is analogous to listening to what the person before you said and using your knowledge of language patterns and habits to determine what the original person actually said despite the interference.

Which defeats the purpose of Telephone, but is the very essence of good translation.

Further attempts to translate Eddie Izzard's giraffes and tigers

A while back, I proposed a strategy for translating Eddie Izzard's (technically untranslatable) giraffes and tigers bit. The basis of this approach was that the tiger needs to be replaced with something that's charadable in French.

In the shower this morning, it occurred to me that it might be possible to keep the tiger.

The French for "tiger" is tigre (scroll down for French pronunciation). The first syllable could be ti, as in the casual French diminutive for petit. And, if the onomatopoeia for a growling predator animal is reasonably similar in French, the second syllable could be "grrr" just like in English.

Now you're probably thinking (especially if you're Anglophone) that the second syllable of the French tigre doesn't sound very much like "grrr". Which is absolutely true. But it the second syllable of the English word "tiger" as pronounced in Eddie's own non-rhotic dialect doesn't sound much like the very rhotic "grrr" either. Eddie pronounces it something like the UK example provided by "mooncow" here, in a way that I would write out in my North American dialect as "tie-guh". The fact that the English word "tiger" contains a G and an R seems to be enough to carry the charade in non-rhotic English, so I see no reason why it wouldn't work in French. (I don't know if the French sound in the second syllable of tigre can be defined as rhotic or not because I never paid enough attention to my phonetics unit, but the French R is certainly more growly like a tiger than the non-rhotic UK English R in the English word "tiger".)

The flaw in this translation is still in the first syllable, using the diminutive ti. In English the first syllable is "tie", which Eddie charades by miming the act of tying a tie (i.e. men's neckwear). The Anglophone audience sees this and thinks "tie", thus making the charade effective. However, any effective charading of the French ti will first lead the Francophone audience to petit, from which they'd need to be guided to ti. It's still a two-step process in French where it's a one-step process in English, and the additional step is significant when you're doing something as complicated as trying to communicate syllables soundlessly while imitating a giraffe.

I can't tell you whether or not this translation would work on stage. It would have to be tested to an actual audience in real-life conditions. But it's the closest I've gotten so far to translating this untranslatable sketch, so I'm posting it.

My theory, which is mine

I always advise fellow translators to use a more specific preposition than "regarding" (or synonyms thereof). I feel that "regarding" forces the reader to make some effort to figure out how the two elements are related to each other, and if you can use a more specific preposition, then the reader doesn't have to make this effort.

However, I have also begun to think that using no prepositions whatsoever, by piling the elements together as a noun phrase or something similar, might make it even more effortless for the reader. This obviously wouldn't work for non-Anglophones (at least not non-Anglophones coming from Romance languages), but I really do suspect noun phrases scan more effortlessly for Anglophones. Perhaps it's because it implies to the reader that they're closely familiar with the subject matter, giving them a sort of false reassurance.

Specific (fake) example:

"The problem regarding the umbrellas"
takes more effort to read than
"The problem with the umbrellas"
takes more effort to read than
"The umbrella problem"

Strictly speaking, they all provide the same amount of information. If someone is completely unfamiliar with whatever the problem with the umbrellas is, calling it "the umbrella problem" isn't going to help them. But if they already have the information they need to understand "the problem regarding the umbrellas", then "the problem with the umbrellas" or "the umbrella problem" will be more effortless to read and understand.

Is this consistent with your experience with the English language?

(Anonymous comments welcome, non-Anglophone comments welcome, but if English is not your first/primary language please tell me what is.)

Choosing female titles in English

Lately I've had a number of different people have a number of different kinds of confusion over which female title to choose when writing in English, so I thought I'd put together a bit of a primer.

Please note that, in all cases, no matter what other factors are in play, the stated preference of the individual being referred to takes precedence over any and all other considerations.

Ms. is the English generic, and as a general rule you should only use Mrs. or Miss if you know the person being referred to prefers that form of address.

However, people who are, for whatever reason, naturally disinclined to use Ms. usually aren't comfortable with that guideline. I've found some people's visceral response to my instruction to use Ms. is "Yeah, but..." So here are some more ways of thinking about it to determine if that "Yeah, but..." is founded.

Do you want to use Mrs.? Is the subject married? If so, is the surname with which you want to use Mrs. her husband's surname? If the answer to either of these questions is no, you must not use Mrs. Technically, Mrs. means "wife of" and is used with the subject's husband's name. It is technically incorrect to use it with a surname other than the subject's husband's, so you may not refer to anyone as Mrs. Maidenname. Divorced women may correctly choose to use Mrs. with their ex-husband's surname, but there's too much potential for offence in calling someone who isn't married "Mrs." unless you know her preferences. Women who have a wife rather than a husband may also correctly choose use Mrs. with their wife's surname, but, again, there's too much potential for offence in introducing such patriarchal connotations unless you know her preferences.

Note that Ms. does not imply unmarriedness. It does not presume to comment on marital status.

Do you want to use Miss? Traditionally, Miss means unmarried, but it also has negative connotations for many people. It can be insulting to young women who want to be seen as mature and grown-up, and it can be insulting to older women who don't want to be thought of as spinsters. The most effective way to explain the precise flavour of the negative connotations is to think of Miss as an accusation of virginity. (Yes, this example is in poor taste, but it's by far the most effective way to explain the negative connotations to someone who doesn't grok them.) When you find yourself reaching for Miss, ask yourself: do you think the subject would want people to think that she's a virgin (regardless of whether she actually is)? If you were in her position, would you want people to think of you as a virgin? If the answer is no, you must not use Miss. So if the subject is 12 years old, Miss is probably okay. If she's 30 years old, it would probably be a diss. If she's 18 years old, it would be rather condescending.

Note that Ms. does not imply non-virginity. It does not presume to comment on personal history.

If you're going to get it wrong, Ms. is the best way to get it wrong. Calling a woman Ms. when she prefers something else is like calling a man Mr. when he prefers something else. If it's a mistake, it's a perfectly understandable mistake. For example, suppose you meet a man you know nothing about except that his name is John Smith. So you address him as "Mr. Smith." No problems there. But it turns out Mr. Smith is actually in the military, and is properly addressed as Col. Smith. That's fine, and you'll use it in the future. But you had no way of knowing that going in, so your use of Mr. was perfectly understandable. However, suppose when you meet Col. Smith he's wearing his uniform so you can see he's in the military. But you don't know your rank insignia very well, so you end up calling him Sgt. Smith. That would be a huge diss! Or suppose you remember that he doesn't go by Mr. but don't remember what it is he does, so you take a guess and call him Dr. Smith. That would just be weird! Unless you're absolutely certain of what his actual title is, Mr. is the best way to get it wrong. Similarly, Ms. is the best way to get it wrong.

Pour les francophones: Oui, le titre féminin utilisé par défaut en français est Madame. Mais Madame, dans le sens du titre défaut, ne se traduit pas par Mrs.! Mrs. est manifestement incorrect si la personne en question n'est pas mariée ou n'utilise pas le nom de famille de son mari. Le titre défaut féminin en anglais doit être Ms.

When translating from French to English: Always always always translate Madame/Mme. as Ms., unless you specifically know the subject prefers something else.

A mission for Toronto language professional, language geeks, and second generation Canadians

One of the many things needed at the Wellesley community centre is interpreters. According to someone who was there on the ground, languages include Arabic, Punjabi, Urdu, Turkish, and Farsi.

I don't know in any official capacity and wasn't there on the ground (and if I'm misconstruing the situation, please do correct me in comments), but based on what I've heard of this situation I don't think an interpreter-quality skill set is necessary. An amateur translator, a second-generation Canadian who can talk to Gramma in the old country's language, or someone with the equivalent of two years' classroom instruction should be able to be of some help.

If this is in your skill set, please do consider popping in to see if you can be of any use. If this is in the skill set of someone you know, please pass on the tinformation.

How to fake plain language in French to English translations

1. Every time you see the word "of", try to rephrase the sentence to eliminate it.
2. Every time you see a word ending in "-ion", try changing the ending to "-ing" and rephrasing the sentence accordingly.
3. Every time you see "regarding" or some synonym thereof (concerning, in regard to, in terms of, etc.), try to replace it with a more specific preposition (about, on, in, for, with, to, etc. Whatever describes the actual real-life relationship between the elements.) Helpful hint: if the first word in any sentence is "regarding" or one of its synonyms, this is a sign that the sentence is not phrased as clearly as it could be.
4. After you've done these first three steps, do a word count. If your English word count is over 80% of your French word count, go through again and look for places where you can reduce your word count.

Help me not be one of those assholes

One of my biggest pet peeves is people who cannot see the point of view of a mindset that they themselves have had. For example, parents who can't look at a situation from a kid's point of view, married people who can't put themselves in the shoes of someone who lives alone, professionals who have forgotten what it's like to be in university, etc.

Now I'm afraid I've become one of those assholes. Please rescue me!

First, some background: My first language is English. We spoke English in the home growing up and I went to school in English. The first language I learned in school was French. I got rather good at it and took more and more French classes, then went to university to study translation, started working at bilingual jobs, and eventually graduated and became a translator.

Here's how my job works: I receive texts in one language, translate them, and deliver them to the client in the other language.

When you were reading that sentence, which language were you picturing me receiving the texts in, and which language were you picturing me delivering to the client in? Please mentally answer this question before you read on.

Okay?

The fact of the matter is that I receive texts in French and translate them into English. (Some of you already knew that, I know.) This is standard operating procedure - the optimal situation is for translators to translate into their mother tongue.

But most non-translators, when they find out I'm a translator, think I translate from English to French.

Why do they think that? Did you think that when I asked you above? If so, why?

Here's where the assholery comes in: I used to think that myself. When I was aspiring to study translation but hadn't been accepted into the program yet, I thought I would be translating English to French. That's just how I assumed it would work. And I remember feeling vaguely disappointed when I found out it's French to English, as though that's something of an insult to my intelligence. But now I can't for the life of me remember why I thought that, which makes me one of those assholes.

Please, save me from my own assholery! Why did I think I'd be translating English to French?

The major flaw in the immigration program for Afghan interpreters

This is an old story, but I haven't heard this major flaw addressed yet so I'm putting it out there.

There's a program to fast-track immigration applications for Afghan interpreters serving the Canadian Forces. I am very glad that such a program exists. These guys have, by far, the greatest risk, the worst working conditions, and the lowest pay of all the many language professionals serving Canada or Canadians. They are serving our country; the least we can do is give them the protection of our country.

However, there is a major flaw in this program:

Neither Kenney nor officials in his department could say exactly when the successful immigrants, who are allowed to bring along two family members each, would arrive in Canada.

They are allowed to bring two family members each. But surely it isn't uncommon to have more than three people (i.e. the interpreter and the designated two family members) in a household? Surely it isn't uncommon to have more than two minor children? Think about your family. Think about your family of origin when you and all your siblings were minors. How well would it have fared if the primary breadwinner left and took only two people along, leaving the rest behind?

How many interpreters are facing a Sophie's Choice of which two family members to take to safety in Canada? How many interpreters are declining to take part in this program simply because they don't want to have to leave some of their dependents behind, perhaps to face retribution for the interpreters' actions?

I was relieved when I heard that my country was going to help protect my Afghan brethren, but now I'm ashamed that we have such a short-sighted, bureaucratic, punitive rule that only allows interpreters with average-sized families to access our protection by sacrificing some of their family members.

An appropriate rule would be that they can bring their household, or they can bring their spouse and children, or even to say that the program is just for the interpreters themselves and they can have their family follow them through normal family reunification measures later. (Not saying that leaving the whole family behind is better, just that it's a more appropriate scope for a rule.) But a limit of two family members is completely arbitrary, in a casually cruel sort of way.

I want my country to be better than that.

This is not an episode of Scooby Doo!

The OED Word of the Day was Holy Ghost. In the Catholicism of my era, we called it the Holy Spirit. I have seen Holy Ghost in older schoolbooks (I strongly suspect they were Catholic schoolbooks from my parents' era, but I'm not 100% certain about this because I saw it before I was aware of different denominations), but I've never heard it in Catholicism in real life.

I can see how the same (currently unknown to me) word might be translated as both Ghost and Spirit by two different translators, but I wonder which is more accurate? Spirit makes better sense to me just logically, but I'm not fully up on my catechism, and I'm not sure if an atheist's idea of logic is applicable when translating such a religious concept.

The OED etymology only went as far back as Old English, at which time the concepts of Ghost and Spirit overlapped more than they do today. But I wonder which word more accurate reflects the original (Greek? Aramaic?) source text?

Strategies for translating Eddie Izzard Stripped: giraffes & tigers

Disclaimers:

1. This post contains spoilers for Eddie Izzard's Stripped. If you're going to see it live and you haven't been spoiled yet, I strongly recommend skipping this post until you see it. (Specifically, this post dissects the bit with the giraffes. If this isn't yet meaningful to you, skip it.) Reading my translation strategies isn't worth missing out on discovering this particular piece of material live.

2. This post does not contain solutions, only strategies. The strategies could be used by a talented native speaker of the target language to translate the material, but I'm not nearly talented enough to translate untranslatable comedy away from my mother tongue.

3. Some creators don't like fans to give them ideas for fear of later lawsuits. So I am explicitly stating that this idea is free for the taking. I doubt you can claim ownership on a mere strategy anyway, but regardless. The original material belongs to Eddie Izzard, this translation strategy is free for anyone to use. If I get wind that it has been used, I will simply be flattered.

This is the scene I'm talking about:



First issue: Does the target culture have charades?

Will the audience recognize what Eddie's doing when he's charading? If so, you're fine and can carry on to the next step. (Just check whether charades is played exactly the same in the target culture, i.e. are the ways of indicating syllables and the nose-touchy "you're right!" sign the same?) If not, that needs to be addressed before we go any further. There are two possible approaches here:

a) Find another suitable game. It needs to be a word guessing game that is played silently, it needs to be recognizable when performed/mimed on stage without props, and, to retain the core humour of the piece, it needs to be somewhat dependent on the verbal characteristics of the words. The piece draws its humour from the fact that mute animals can still recognize homophones and put together syllables to create words. In terms of pure translation, it would be perfectly valid to use a word guessing game that isn't dependent on the verbal characteristics of the words, but that would be far less effective as a piece of humour. So if you're doing this for class, you can totally go for a game that doesn't depend on verbal characteristics and get a solid B- (or maybe a B+ if the prof gives you credit for tackling something untranslatable). But if you're actually adapting it for the stage, don't go there. Better to leave it out of the show all together than to eliminate the crux of the humour.

b) The most awesome callback ever. Introduce new material early in the set that, as part of a broader gag or story, explains the English game of charades, complete with demonstrations, so the audience has a solid grounding in how the game is played. Then, in the second half of the show, bring out the giraffes. This is incredibly difficult and beyond the scope of translation, and it would be impossible to implement in a traditional translator-client relationship. ("Okay, I've got your translation all ready, I just need you to write five minutes of brand new material that meets these very specific requirements.") But if it could be carried off, it might be the greatest callback in human history.

Second issue: Replace the tiger

The tiger is a tiger in the first place because it's charadable. It doesn't need to be a tiger. It could be any animal, or indeed anything that would present a threat to a giraffe. (Lions, jaguars, hunters, alien abductions, Voldemort...) While the tiger was originally a cop-out in that tigers and giraffes don't co-exist in the wild, there is some humour to be gained from the fact that it is a cop-out. When Eddie performs it at least, the fact of admitting to a cop-out is charming, and there's a laugh or two in speculating just how and why the tigers are in Africa.

So the tiger's replacement needs to have the following characteristics.

a) Be charadable - in the target language. This is obviously the most important factor, because without something to charade the material wouldn't exist. You can't use the tiger charade used in the English version of Stripped because "cravate-grr" doesn't mean anything in any language. You need a target-language word where each syllable has a charadable homophone in the target language.

b) Be something giraffes would need to talk about. Humour could be gained in explaining how something that isn't at first glance a threat to a giraffe is in fact a threat. (If the justification of the threat is kind of half-assed, it could be introduced earlier in the show - perhaps on Noah's Ark - and gain additional humour by being a callback.) Alternatively, it doesn't necessarily need to be a threat that the giraffes announce to each other. It could be food, or a shoe sale, or a celebrity whose autograph they want. If it isn't a threat humour will be lost because the silent scream bit would have to be cut, so it might be useful to introduce additional humour by making the subject of the charades something more surreal than just food. But on the other hand, it's quite possible to overload the surreality. We already have a human performer miming being a giraffe, and then miming being a giraffe performing charades. It's possible that adding something too surreal to all this - like the giraffes have an Elvis sighting or something - might take it too far and lose the audience. I don't have the skill to tell when sitting behind my computer. As a translator, my ideal approach would be to present options - say yummy trees, and an ice cream truck, and a Sith lord, and an Elvis sighting - and let the performer use their professional judgement.

c) Be two syllables long. One syllable isn't quite charades, it's just mime. The humour comes from mute animals recognizing homophones and combining syllables to form words, so you'd lose a lot of that with just one syllable. But there's also the audience's attention span to take into account. A purely visual bit like this requires more audience attention than a verbal bit, because they can't look away from the stage even for a second. (If you've ever taken a sign-language class taught solely in sign language, you'll know how hard this is.) They have to accept the charading giraffes, retain memory of each syllable, put the word together without verbal repetition, and accept that the giraffes are putting the word together through mime rather than through verbal repetition. That's a lot of commitment, and if you lose even a bit of the commitment you crash and burn. Monty Python's "Call the next defend-ANT" bit works because they're constantly repeating the previously guessed syllables out loud, but you can see why it would never work silently. Three syllables might work, maybe, but it's really better to focus your efforts on finding a suitable two-syllable word. In other words, even if you have the most perfect charade ever for Eyjafjallajökull, this isn't the place to use it.